Hugh Trenchard, 1st Viscount Trenchard

Hugh Trenchard, 1st Viscount Trenchard (3 February 1873-10 February 1956) was a Marshal of the Royal Air Force who was instrumental in establishing the RAF and pioneering the concept of strategic bombing.

Biography
Hugh Montague Trenchard was born in Taunton, Somerset, England in 1873. He served in the British Army in the Second Boer War and, after service in Nigeria, joined the Royal Flying Corps in 1913. From 1915, he commanded the RFC on the Western Front of World War I, and towards the end of the war, developed the use of airplanes as bombers. The RFC had been part of the army, but in April 1918 he saw it created into a separate Royal Air Force. As Chief of Air Staff from 1919 to 1929, he developed the RAF as a flexible, cost-effective alternative to the army, as a way of policing the British Empire. In 1927, he became the first air marshal. Later, from 1932 to 1935, as commissioner of police, he reorganized the metropolitan police force, establishing a college and a forensic laboratory at Hendon.